This is a work of fiction. I do mention historical events, such as the Federal Theater Project, the Dies Committee, HUAC, and some figures active in the arts in the nineteen-thirties, like Shirley Graham, as part of the background of the novel, All characters who actually play a role in the story, as well as events like the destruction of the Fourth Amendment, are solely the fabrication of a brain made frenzied by chronic insomnia. Any resemblance to any real person, institution, government or legislation is purely coincidental.
CHAPTER 1
A Walk on the Wild SideThe clouds across the face of the moon made it hard for me to find my way. I’d been over the grounds yesterday morning, but in the dark everything is different. I kept stumbling on tree roots and chunks o? brick from the crumbling walks.
I was trying not to make any noise, on the chance that someone really was lurking about, but I was more concerned about my safety: I didn’t want to sprain an ankle and have to crawl all the way back to the road. At one point I tripped on a loose brick and landed smack on my tailbone. My eyes teared with pain; I sucked in air to keep from crying out. As I rubbed the sore spot, I wondered whether Geraldine Graham had seen me fall. Her eyes weren’t that good, but her binoculars held both image stabilizers and nightvision enablers.
Fatigue was making it hard for me to concentrate. It was midnight, usually not late on my clock, but I was sleeping badly these days-I was anxious, and feeling alone.
Right after the Trade Center, I’d been as numbed and fearful as everyone else in America. After a while, when we’d driven the Taliban into hiding and the anthrax looked like the work of some homegrown maniac, most people seemed to wrap themselves in red-white-and-blue and return to normal. I couldn’t, though, while Morrell remained in Afghanistan-even
though he seemed ecstatic to be sleeping in caves as he trailed after warlordsturned-diplomats-turned-warlords.